Would you take seven family members on a cross
country trip in a 22-year old car that had clocked
several hundred thousand miles? The car would be too
unreliable, you say? It would experience brake failure
on a mountain road or overheat in a scorching dessert.
You wouldn't risk it?

The U.S. government would. That's how we lost the
space shuttle Columbia and seven astronauts.
Columbia had been around the world many times and
had undergone the stresses and strains of 27 escapes
from the earth's gravitational pull and 27 re-entries of
earth's atmosphere traveling at 25 times the speed of
sound. That is too much wear and tear for a vehicle with
no margin for error and 2.5 million parts.

NASA is having to conduct a space program on a
shoestring. That's why we lost the astronauts.
That's why the U.S., on the verge of
war, suffered a tremendous blow to its prestige when
Columbia broke apart upon reentry.

Space isn't
important enough for the policymakers in Washington. It
is not a program politicians can use to buy votes.
Better to pour the money, as President Bush proposed in
his state of the union address, [SOTU
address
text
video
audio]
into a rat hole of sexual promiscuity by going to war
against
AIDS in Africa.

A truth-teller could say that the war against AIDS
consists of keeping infected people alive longer with
expensive drugs so that they can continue to be sexually
active and further spread the disease. According to UN
projections, sub-Saharan Africa will experience
55 million AIDS deaths between 2000 and 2020.
Africa's
graveyards are already full. The dead are being
buried vertically.

AIDS is entirely a result of sexual behavior. It is
insanity to make
U.S. taxpayers responsible for other people's sexual
behavior - in the meantime starving NASA and killing
highly trained astronauts.

The government's job is to set priorities and to
treat scarce resources with respect. Assuming
responsibility for Iraq, the Middle East, and AIDS in
Africa is the way to go broke fast.

Investigators and congressional committees will
search into the cause of the Columbia disaster in order
to distract the public's attention from the obvious:
NASA's $14.5 billion budget is not enough money to do
its job. The priority placed on NASA by the government's
budgeteers is so low that our president and elected
representatives had rather spend money subsidizing
sexual promiscuity in Africa.

During Columbia's last launch it was observed that
insulation on the external fuel tank broke loose,
striking Columbia's left wing. Why didn't Columbia dock
at the space station before reentry in order to check
for damage?

The answer to this question shows the damage budget
constraints have done to NASA. The astronauts aboard
Columbia were
not trained for space station docking. Columbia
lacked the adapter collar necessary for linkup to the
station. The astronauts were not sufficiently trained in
spacewalk to examine the ship even if they had been
trained to dock it.

If this isn't operation on a shoestring budget, what
is?

NASA is not merely underfunded. According to the
Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2003,
"the integrity of NASA's merit-based research is
seriously eroded by the practice of congressionally
directed spending known as earmarks. NASA has suffered
from a surge in both the number and cost of earmarks."
Earmarks have risen from 20 in 1997 to 120 in 2002.

Many earmarks have nothing to do with NASA's mission:
"For example, the Congress earmarked NASA's current
budget to fund corporate jets, college dormitories,
libraries, and museums."

According to the government accounting office, waste
and fraud in the federal budget is larger than NASA's
budget. In May of last year the Office of Management and
Budget announced that the federal government had doled
out $20 billion in health, housing and food benefits to
people not entitled to them. Erroneous Medicare payments
alone were almost the size of NASA's budget.

When it comes to waste, the GAO barely scratches the
surface. The federal education budget is several times
larger than NASA's. What's to show for it? According to
a
recently released report, a 1955 high school
education is the equivalent of a university education
today. In 1955 there was no federal aid to education.

Science has more to offer us than war. Let's spend
$100 billion on regime change in the Middle East after
attending to the safety and survival of the brave men
and women we send into space.